Animal rights activists took to Guelph City Hall on Saturday to protest their issue with eating animals and its relationship to the pandemic in a very visual way.
The protest was part of a global call to action by the group Eating Animals Causes Pandemics (EACP) where activists marched in biohazard suits around the world.
In Guelph, five dummies donning white face masks and surgical masks and bodies created out of paint suits stuffed with newspaper were placed in Market Square for roughly 15 minutes. The dummies held signs about the viruses and their relationship to animals while a siren rang to depict a picture of what the future may look like if the food system around the world does not change.
“It's basically to raise awareness about the connection between eating animals and the pandemics that we’re seeing more and more because it is something that isn't being spoken about enough,” said Mo Markham, animal rights activist and organizer of the protest in Guelph and in other nearby cities.
“The animals are the origins and what we’re doing with the planet — raising more and more animals for food and for food products — is destroying the planet.”
Markham said the purpose of using dummies was to respect the provincial lockdown restrictions while still standing up to act.
“We don’t know, of course, where COVID-19 came from but we know it's a zoonotic disease and we understand that it is almost certainly connected to the animals that people are eating,” said Markham.
“All of the animals we keep in large numbers are a risk to us so whether that be in a wet market or commercial farm of whatever size.”
The movement says that the solution to over 75 per cent of all pandemics in the world is a worldwide transition to a plant-based food system.
"It's very difficult for us to talk about something which is so much a part of who we are —what we eat. People don't want to talk about that," said Markham.
“The media doesn't want to talk about it because people react badly to it. Governments don’t want to talk about it because they're basically interested in getting voted in again.”
